Marathon: Freedom or Death

Achilles. This is a fighter trained in the pits of slavery — a man who has neither arete nor generosity. He is merely a killer. Is the look on his brow more than that of a bestial destroyer? Is he different from a boar or a lion that kills the men who tend our crops?

‘This is a man bred to slavery, and what he has now, he has stolen from better men — first through piracy and then through open theft of a farm in Plataea. No man in Plataea dares act against him — they fear his wrath. But here in Athens we are better men, with a better strength of law.’

There was more — much more. Two hours of detailed (and fallacious) vilification. Cleitus knew nothing of me save some highly coloured details from Plataea — and it was obvious where they came from. Because my cousin Simon, son of Simon who hanged himself, was standing a little to the left of Cleitus, with a look of joyous hate stamped across his features.

I locked eyes with him, and gave him some bland indifference.

By the time Cleitus was finished, many of his audience were asleep. He had, after all, repeated the charges and the assaults on my character fifteen or twenty times. His arrogance showed through too plainly. Heraclitus would have taught him better. At Ephesus, one of the things we learned was not to annoy a jury — nor to bore it.

On the other hand, none of the men in that jury were my friends, and most were bored only because they had made up their minds before they put a sandal on the slippery rock of justice.

Slaves came and refilled the water-clock. I leaned over and pointed out Simon to Aristides, who looked at him and nodded to me.

Aristides stood up slowly. He walked gracefully to the speaker’s podium and turned to me. Our eyes met for a long time.

Then he turned back to the jurors.

‘My friend Arimnestos cannot speak here today as he is a foreigner,’ he said. ‘But although his tongue cannot speak, his spear has spoken loud and long for Athens — louder and longer than any of you Alcmaeonids. If deeds rather than words were the weight of a man, if the price of citizenship were measured in feats of arms, not barley or oil, he would sit in judgment, and none of you would even qualify as thetes.

Ouch. Powerful rhetoric — but a damned annoying way to win over a jury.

Aristides walked across to Cleitus. ‘You maintain that my friend is a slave? Or some sort of penniless foreigner?’

Cleitus stood. ‘I do.’

Aristides smiled. ‘And you have received my suit against you for the theft of a horse and a woman?’

‘I have taken them against the man’s indemnity,’ Cleitus said.

‘In other words, you admit yourself that my friend was the owner of the horse and the slave.’ Aristides stepped back, just like a swordsman who administers the killing blow and now avoids the fountain of blood.

Cleitus flushed red. ‘He probably stole them!’ he shouted, but the archon basileus pointed his staff.

‘Silence!’ he roared. ‘Your time is done and you speak out of turn.’

Aristides turned to the jurors. ‘My friend is the son of Technes, head of the Corvaxae of Plataea. My friend could, if he might speak, tell you how his father was murdered — by the father of that man standing by Cleitus — and his farm stolen by the same man, and how Arimnestos later returned from ten years of war — war at the behest of Athens, I might add — to find his enemies in possession of his farm. He might speak of how the assembly of Plataea voted to punish the usurper — that man’s father — and he might speak of what a twisted claim has just been made — accusations void of truth. Any man of Plataea would tell us, if called to witness, that my friend is master of a farm that provides three hundred measures of grain and oil and wine.’

Aristides had them listening now.

‘But none of this matters. What matters is simple. My friend did not kill Cleitus’s useless cousin. In point of fact, Cleitus’s case is already void, because he has spoken — and he may not speak again — yet he has not troubled to prove that his cousin is dead.’

Cleitus had missed the matter entirely. His head snapped up, his mouth worked.

‘Really, cousin — for we are cousins, Cleitus, are we not? — you are too young to plead before this august body. You needed, first, to prove that your cousin Nepos is dead. Second, you needed to demonstrate that my friend was in some way linked to his death, beyond the circumstance that he is from Plataea. If you had remembered, you would have maintained that your cousin died at the shrine of Leitos on the flanks of Cithaeron. But like a young man, you let spite carry you away, and you forgot to mention the place of this supposed murder, or any other facts relating to it. What you have not told these worthy men is that your whole knowledge of this matter comes from two panicked slaves who returned to you, claiming that their master had been killed. You have never been to Plataea, you have no idea if the claim is accurate, you have acted on the word of two treacherous slaves, and in truth, as far as you know, at any moment your cousin Nepos may stroll into the crowd and ask what this is about.’

Cleitus rose again. ‘He is dead. He was killed at the shrine-’

The archon rose. ‘Silence this instant, puppy.’

‘Listen to me!’ Cleitus spat.

The archon waved and two gaudily dressed Scythian archers took Cleitus by the arms and carried him off the hill.

Aristides looked around in silence. ‘I claim that my opponent has made no case. He has not shown a body. He has not offered a witness. There is nothing for me to answer but the slander of a traitor’s son. I call a vote on the evidence presented.’

Stunned silence greeted him. The water-clock was running noisily — it was still almost full.

The archon looked them over. ‘I cannot direct you,’ he said. ‘But if you pretend that Cleitus has a case, I’ll make you pay.’

I was acquitted, twenty-seven to fourteen. A carefully arranged vote, as it meant that I could not claim damages from Cleitus.

Several men tried to force through a different vote that would have made me stand trial again if more evidence could be gathered. They were still arguing when the sun set and Aristides led me off the hill.

‘You are the very Achilles of orators,’ I said.

Aristides shook his head. ‘That was bad. I used arts to win. Had I argued the case on its merits, they would have found a way to kill you.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘I feel dirty. Perhaps I should exile myself. This is not law. This is foolishness.’

‘The archon was just.’

‘The archon hates the Alcmaeonids as upstarts and posturers. He’s no friend of mine, but he’d raise me to Olympus if it would hurt the new men. All I had to do was put Cleitus in a place where his arrogance would count against him.’

‘What now?’ I asked. ‘I want my horse and my slave girl.’

Aristides shook his head. ‘Perhaps in the spring. And if you stay here, you’ll be dead. I don’t have enough wax tablets to keep you alive.’

We walked to his farm and Jocasta served wine. I told her the whole of the trial while Glaucon and Sophanes sulked. They didn’t love me any more.

Aristides noted them. He inclined his long chin in their direction and raised an eyebrow at me.

‘Hmm,’ I said.

Jocasta was looking at her husband with her eyes shining. ‘Should I invite this pretty foreigner to live in our house, so that I can finally hear what happens at your trials, love?’ she asked. To me, she said, ‘He never tells me a word of his speeches.’

The great man looked down his nose. ‘If I told you my speeches, you would only seek to improve them,’ he said. ‘I could not bear that.’

Their eyes met, and I felt a twinge of jealousy — not bodily jealousy, like a boy feels when a girl leaves him for another, but something in the soul. Those two had something I had never had — something calm and deep.

‘Why are the boys on edge?’ Aristides asked quietly.

‘I killed some thugs,’ I said. I saw the effect my words had on the lady. Killing was part of life for me. Not for